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I awkwardly turned to face the Itchibans and found Otaru staring at me thoughtfully. “I find myself in a unique position. You can not be bribed, for you are already wealthy. I could offer you the training to bring you health and long life, but your condition already gives you that.”

“Your condition also means any attempts at training in anything else would be an exercise in frustration for everyone involved. If what she said is true.”

He glanced at my son and his family. “Even if I was inclined to threaten you. It would not be a viable strategy or even an easy one. Apparently, we have a certain kind of weight.”

Looking at me again, he asked. “So what do you want Mr. Lathe?”

I took a deep breath and looked over at the spot where the Witch had done something that I hoped was only a way to spy on us after she left the room.

“I want the children, all of our children, to be safe. I want to give them the opportunities to try out their dreams and to try to support them. I don’t want them to be stuck spending their lives for other people’s dreams Mr. Itchiban.”

I turned to look at him. “Endora seems a little out of touch with being human, but she seems to want to keep Ami safe until she can be taught to keep herself safe. So I think between all of us we can figure out a way to give the Witch what she wants without taking Ami away from her family.”

I stepped over to the couches and held a hand out to the one while standing in front of the other. “So I would like to hear just what it is that you really want Mr. Itchiban.’

The old man looked at me for a moment and nodded before walking over to sit opposite me. He seemed a little relieved to sit down, to be honest.

His granddaughter Hime sat beside him while Dave stayed standing behind the couch, guarding the old man’s back even here. Well, maybe especially here.

Charles and Sara stood behind me, while Ami stepped away from her parents and sat beside me. “I would to know as well Ojiisan.”

The old man closed his eyes for a moment before opening them to stare out into the distance. “It was another time, almost two centuries ago when my grandmother died without a student to teach the ways of an Onmyoji.”

“Our enemies had gathered together once rumors of her failing health could no longer be held back. Her last words were for us to flee across the ocean. My father sent me to lead a branch of the clan in California while he gathered the last of our wealth and assets. Many of those who stayed behind with him did survive to join me. He did not.”

He looked at Ami. “I swore to return to Japan for revenge. All I thought we would need is an heir to my grandmother to regain our rightful place. I spoke of this many times over my life, never accepting that this was now our family's home.”

Closing his eyes again, a look of grief washed over his face for a moment. “We have lived here, and died here for over a hundred and eigthy years. I have seen five generations born here. Returning to Japan, for vengeance, for face. It was nothing but an old fool still holding on to a child’s dream.”

He looked again at Ami and then Sara. Then looked down at Aran who had crept up to sit on the couch next to him while his eyes were closed. He smiled at the kid. “Aren't you the sneaky one, youngest of descendants.”

With a sigh, he looked back to Ami. “When I was told that your parents sent you into hiding to keep you from me. I began to wonder what my own family had begun to think of me. That they would feel the need to hide their own children from me.”

“Did they fear that I would force them into some Quixotic journey, or that if I did that they would have to refuse me? So, I did as I had so long ago sworn to do. I returned to our homeland. Alone.”

With some difficulty, he clenched his fists. “They turned our ancestral home into a housing development. Even the shrine.”

“The Sakura hills.” He huffed. “At least they still tend to the trees.”

The old man gave us a fierce grin. “I visited the man that had been my greatest friend, then rival, then enemy. His family had put him into a rest home to rot. Of all his family only one of his granddaughters had bothered to visit in the last three years.”

He looked me in the eye. “What do I want Mr. Lathe? For myself, I want my family's love and respect. I want to live a little bit longer. And I wanted just a little bit of vengeance.” He held up his hand with his finger and thumb held slightly apart, then turned it into a fist.

“Which I have gotten enough of to satisfy the little bit of that angry grief stricken young man that still lives within me.”

Now he looked again to Ami. “What I want for my family, they have. A family that is close to each other, healthy, and prosperous. Which leaves you child. What do I want for you?”

He reached out to her as if he was holding out something to her. “I want to give you your inheritance. The papers and books my mother filled with her knowledge and wisdom. The books and scrolls my clan had collected for seven generations before her.”

“I want to give you what my mother entrusted to me for some descendant of hers that was yet to be born.”

He turned to look at the door to the hall where the three witches had exited the room. “And I want it to be yours to guard, to add to, and to use to benefit both you and our family. Not to have you compelled to hand it over to those who lack respect for your ancestors.”

Ami looked down at the floor as her mother spoke up. “That's a lot to put on an eleven year old girl Ojiisan.”

Otaru leaned back on the couch as he looked at his great-granddaughter. “We can teach her to be strong, first. Even as she learns from her grandmother, Brianna Caine. She, I trust to put the child’s needs first.”